SNMP

SNMP is a standardized protocol used to collect and manage devices. Although the standard allows you to use SNMP for device management, in my experience, most network administrators prefer to keep SNMP as an information collection mechanism only. Since SNMP operates on UDP, which is connectionless, and considering the relatively weak security mechanism in versions 1 and 2, making device changes via SNMP tends to make network operators a bit uneasy. SNMP version 3 has added cryptographic security and new concepts and terminology to the protocol, but the way SNMP version 3 is adapted varies among network device vendors.

SNMP is widely used in network monitoring and has been around since 1988 as part of RFC 1065. The operations are straightforward, with the network manager sending GET and SET requests toward the device and the device with the SNMP agent responding with the information per request. The most widely adopted standard is SNMPv2c, which is defined in RFC 1901...